Lots of whining

So sometime in the blurry 3-month haze leading up to Christmas, I pulled a muscle in my lower back.  Now, I don't know if you've ever attempted to continue to live your life with a pulled back muscle, but I can assure you, it is not pleasant.  And when "living your life" consists of hauling around a giant 19-lb baby all day, and doing the enormous amounts of laundry that having two boys and a constantly wet/dirty/barfy baby generate, well then "living your life" is comparable to single-handedly building a railroad.  Through Texas.

I probably should go to the doctor in regards to my twingy and perennially sore back, but I just don't have time.  I am still doing laundry.

Needless to say (but I will anyway) having a sore back makes me a wee bit crabby.  Especially by the end of the day.  This is not coincidentally when Jack usually acts up...his opening act occurs at the dinner table where he torments Dan by not eating, and then sneaks bites when Dan isn't paying attention.  It does not bode well that he loves to antagonize his father already; I can only imagine what plans Sydney has in store for me.  The second act happens while Dan does the dishes and Jack proceeds to talk a hole in my head about various toys and violent acts.  The third, and THANK GOD final act is getting his skinny white body into pajamas and into bed.  Luckily this is usually taken care of by Dan, but often I am required to be the relief parent when veins start bulging in Dan's face as Jack comes up with his usual 53 reasons why he can't go to bed JUST QUITE YET.  Last night I overheard Dan ushering Jack through the process when there was a period of silence followed by some loud squawking.  Dan had found a bag of cookies stashed in Jack's bathroom.  Suddenly everything made sense:

After dinner (while Dan was occupied with the dishes) Jack had talked me into giving him some shortbread cookies.  I gave him two, but set the bag down next to the couch where I was sitting with the baby.  After eating his cookies, he picked the bag up and said sweetly, "I'll just put these away."  He walked back through the kitchen to where I assumed he was putting the cookies.  Well, unbeknownst to me, he walked THROUGH the kitchen and up the back stairs to his bathroom where he put the cookies "away."  Now this didn't bother me so much because it is absolutely something that I would have/did do in my childhood (Boyds are huge cookie-heads) but it was unnerving to me that he had the guile to come back down the FRONT STEPS holding a book which led me to believe he had run upstairs to grab something from his room.

So, to look on the bright side, Jack could have a successful career as a petty thief and also is clearly smart enough to find an opening and take it.  But the un-ignorable truth is that he is a weasel.  So note to all mothers of boys that are under the age of 4:  Enjoy this age of innocence and honesty.  Because at 4 things start to get ugly.